Bad Hair Day
by Ellethiriel
Summary: In which Beren learns the hard way why Elven hair growth spells should not be messed with. Total crack.


**This... is a really strange crackfic I've been thinking about writing for a while. It's set during the time of wandering after Beren was rescued from Tol-in-Gaurhoth.** **(Oh, and please excuse the lame title. :P)**

 **Enjoy!**

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It was a beauteous autumn evening somewhere northwest of Doriath. The dark velvet sky was pricked with stars that glistened brightly above a small campfire, around which sat Beren, Lúthien, and Huan. Above the flames a small bird was suspended, impaled on a thin green stick.

Lúthien, huddled in her shadowy cloak against the night chill, tucked a strand of short bobbed hair behind her ear and turned her gaze away from the fire in disgust. "Beren, why did you have to go and kill a _nightingale_ for supper? Who even eats them, anyway? They're songbirds!"

Beren's eyes slid into focus from the daze he'd fallen into while staring at Lúthien. "Hmm? Oh, but my love, you recall that Huan has a cold and can't track down anything-" (Huan gave a mournful doggy nod of acknowledgment) "-and that was the only thing I've been able to find all day!"

"Hmph," Lúthien sniffed. "I don't like the symbolism. It's almost like you're roasting _me_ or something." She looked at Beren. _Oh, well, even if he's a dolt he's still cute. Those dreamy grey eyes... and that beard..._ A slight smile crept over her face, and she absently stared into the dancing flames.

Beren shifted uncomfortably for a moment while Lúthien stared at nothing. "Well, I didn't think of it that way, my love," he finally said. "I guess I could go look for a rabbit or something, but I probably won't find anything at this hour..."

"Oh, no, it's quite all right," Lúthien responded unexpectedly, flashing a smile of such brilliance that her boyfriend nearly suffered a coronary. She patted his hand reassuringly to prove she really wasn't upset anymore, and then stood up, walking closer to the fire. Flowers randomly sprang up around her bare toes. Once she was within a comfortably warm distance of the fire, she knelt, smoothed out her hair (which was obscenely short thanks to her treehouse escapade), and began to sing.

Her song rose piercing into the crisp air. Huan, who wasn't feeling well to begin with and for once in his extremely long life wanted to sleep, felt like howling, but clamped his jaw shut.

Beren stared at her, mesmerized by the general tone of her voice but unaware of the nature of the song, though it seared itself into his mind. But unfortunately the Elvish singing was too much for his puny mortal brain to take, and after about fifteen seconds he fell on his face as though slain at once by bliss and grief.

~oOo~

When he awoke it was the dead of night. Flickering sparks showed where the fire _had_ been - before Lúthien had apparently let it die out. Groggily Beren got up, feeling like he had a hangover for some reason, and stepped over the sleeping forms of Lúthien and Huan. Without thinking about it, he began to sing snatches of Lúthien's song under his breath as he felt around for a stick to stir the embers with. How long had he slept anyway? Had Lúthien eaten the nightingale after all? And wait... why was Huan sleeping? Oh well, stranger things had happened. Where _was_ that stick?

Aha! He had it, and after some blowing and poking at the embers, the fire flared up again and he dumped a handy pile of pine needles and twigs on it. Already he was feeling warmer, very much so.

Behind him, Lúthien, her hair now long and braided, suddenly awoke and sat up. "What's going-" She stopped, and then screamed suddenly at the top of her lungs. Beren leaped five feet in the air, Huan twitched and woke up, and the delicate eardrums of a nearby squirrel were shattered.

"There's a creature of Morgoth in our camp!" Lúthien finally managed.

"What?! Where?!" Beren yelled. "I'll save you, Tinúviel!" Seizing a flaming brand, he stood before her, nobly shielding her from harm as he looked around for the dastardly creature who would dare to invade their camp.

"Agghhh!" the Elf-maiden screamed again. Huan stared wide-eyed at some point roughly near Beren and with a whimper slunk off into the forest.

"Huan, you idiot!" Lúthien backed in the direction the dog had gone, staring in front of her. "Get thee gone, foul creature of Morgoth!"

"Yeah, get away!" Beren echoed, waving the torch around and showering himself with sparks in the process. He didn't see anything out there, though. "Lúthien," he said, turning around to face her, "are you sure-"

"GET AWAY!" she shrieked. She jumped over a log and ran.

"Lúthien! Come back! There may be more evil creatures abroad!" Beren ran after her, but he hadn't gotten far before he suddenly became aware of a smoky smell. _Oh, Valar, my clothes must've caught from a spark._ He dropped the torch in a pile of dead and resin-soaked pine needles and began to pat himself down.

That was when Beren realized that he was covered in hair. Thick, shaggy brown hair. All over his body. It covered his clothes, his face, everything.

"AGGHHH!"

 _How did this even happen?! Now I'm hairy, Lúthien's run off, and there's a creature of Morgoth after us! Oh, Valar! Think, Beren, think!_

The result of his thinking was that Beren grabbed his torch (leaving a smoldering pile of pine needles) and sprinted after his girlfriend. "Tinúviel! It's Beren, and I'm hairy! Help!"

He tore through the forest, colliding with trees, bushes, and one small but exceedingly obnoxious boulder. Suddenly a glow lit everything up from behind him with a _whoosh_.

The pine forest had caught fire.

 _Oh, crud._

Beren ran faster and then crashed into Huan. Groaning, the two picked themselves up. Huan looked ready to bolt, but Beren raised his hands placatingly. "Huan, ol' buddy! It's me, Beren! D-don't you know my voice?"

"..." Huan said, standing there in horror as he realized that this terrifying figure was indeed Beren, a raging forest fire was coming their way, and Lúthien was lost somewhere in the woods.

"Seriously, I don't know how this happened!" Beren was crouching next to Huan and beginning to panic. "Do you know how I can fix it?" (Looks were rather important to this guy.) "Oh, and have you seen Lúthien? Also, the creature of Morgoth is still out there somewhere!"

"..."

"Why can't you talk when I need you to?" Beren cried wildly. "Whose crazy idea was it to give you only _three_ opportunities to talk throughout your life? Ugh!"

"Beren?! Is that _you_?!" Lúthien screeched. She had been standing behind a tree listening to the whole conver- sorry, monologue.

"Yes! Yes, it is I, my love!" Beren called, sheer joy lighting his furry face brighter than the glow of the approaching forest fire. He stood up and Lúthien eyed him in shock.

"How did - what - oh, you didn't!" Suddenly she began to laugh. Hard. Beren was used to her frequent mood swings, and so he stayed carefully where he was, while Huan (who had a splitting headache and a severely stuffy nose) growled under his breath in annoyance.

"You - you," she gasped, "you sang my hair spell, didn't you?"

"Hair spell? Am I missing something?"

Lúthien only laughed harder, bending over and slapping her knees. Beren was now greatly alarmed.

"Lúthien?" he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"The hair spell - I sang that song last night, remember? Did you ever sing it?"

"Uh, no... oh, wait, I think I did. Just a little when I got up to stoke the fire." Beren remained perfectly serious, but inwardly he was facepalming like there was no tomorrow. "Okay, so we know why this happened - and why your hair is long again-" (he picked her braid up, looked at it, and then dropped it again) "-but Lúthien, my love, we have pressing issues. The creature of Morgoth is still out there somewhere, and-"

"What?! Oh, Beren, you lovable idiot! There _is_ no creature of Morgoth!" She broke down laughing again. "I mistook _you_ for one!"

"..." said Beren, and facepalmed in real life.

Just then, a flaming pine tree crashed to the ground about ten feet away from them.

"That escalated quickly," he said. "Run!" He shoved Lúthien ahead of him, and all three took off.

"Where did that forest fire even come from?!" Lúthien asked, back to her moodswingy self.

"I have no idea," Beren said with complete truth. He honestly didn't understand the mysterious ways of fire.

They splashed through a small river just as the Sun showed herself over the eastern horizon. "Yay," Beren said, dousing his now-pointless torch in the water. They threw themselves down, breathing hard, as the fire raged on the opposite bank.

"I wonder if anybody lives in those woods?" Lúthien inquired after a moment.

"Well, they don't now."

Lúthien slapped him. "Don't be so insensitive!"

Luckily (for the forest's inhabitants) it began to rain heavily fifteen minutes later, and unluckily (for our heroes) it decided to rain on both sides of the river. They sat there glumly, soaked to the skin. Beren looked like a large, shaggy, and very wet bear.

"Is this hairy situation permanent?" he asked.

"Sort of," Lúthien said. "Some of it might fall out on its own, but you'll probably have to shave."

"You seem to know a lot about this..." Beren said suspiciously.

"Yep. That's because it happened to my dad once. Let's just say he wasn't too happy..." Lúthien grinned cheerily.

"What's up with your stupid hair spell anyway?" Beren spluttered. "How does this stuff even work? Your hair turned out fine!"

Lúthien shrugged. "Even I don't know everything."

The rain randomly stopped and the Sun popped out from behind a cloud. They got up, Huan pawing rainwater from his eyes.

Beren thought over the night. It had gone from roasting a nightingale and Lúthien singing to a wild chase through some anonymous forest pursued by a wildfire. Oh, well. Crazier things had happened to him, like the time not so long before when he had been captured by a weirdo who ran an island full of werewolves. He shivered. The worst part of his imprisonment there had been the fact that he was forced to abandon his highly-principled life of vegetarianism and grovel for scraps of some foul-tasting animal his jailers threw to them occasionally. He shuddered again. They had really broken him down in that place. Why, they had manipulated him so well that he had readopted the lifestyle of an omnivore again! He had actually been intending to eat that nightingale! He, Beren son of Barahir, had strayed from the path of the true and right! Wait, what had happened to that nightingale after all?

"I ate it," Lúthien said, dimpling.

 _Curse the Elven ability to read minds..._

"I heard that too, y'know."

Beren facepalmed.

"Y'know," Lúthien said thoughtfully, changing the subject, "why are we wandering out here like this?"

"Um, because we have nowhere else to go at the moment?"

"But we do! We have to get that Silmaril! Why are we wasting our time wandering aimlessly about?" She grabbed Beren's arm. "Come on. We're going to Angband!"

"Are you mad... I mean, my love, we'll be caught for sure!"

"With your disguise and my smarts? Not likely," Lúthien said sassily. She shoved Beren on Huan's back and climbed on herself. "Run, dog," she commanded. Huan unwillingly took off.

For once, Beren had no words. He only hoped that if they returned with a Silmaril, he could find the time to shave before presenting it to Thingol...

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 **Welp. This is probably the weirdest thing I've ever shared online. I'm not even sure who thought up the original idea for Beren messing with** **Lúthien's hair spell and it malfunctioning; my sisters and I were goofing off and throwing crazy ideas out there, and one of us thought of it, but I'm still not sure if it was me or not. (Oh, and by the way, when I posted this I had no idea where the phrase 'that escalated quickly' even came from. I just saw it all over the internet, and only now have I bothered to look it up...)**

 **Anyway, review? :D**


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